7th October 2021 Our Childcare Change Now campaign in collaboration with Grazia and The Juggle finally made it to a Whitehall debate. THANK YOU! After over 113,000 of you signed our petition demanding an independent  review into the cost and affordability of the early years sector, on the 13th of September our #ChildcareChangeNow campaign in collaboration with Grazia and The Juggle finally made it to Westminster.  A huge thank you to our collaborators in getting us to parliament, and the MPs who represented us so well. Despite the shocking findings from the 20,000 parent strong (thank you again) survey we ran with leading parent organisations showing that:

•  97% of parents believed that childcare in the UK was too expensive
• 1/3 of parents said that they paid more for childcare than their rent or mortgage (This proportion rose to 47% of respondents from a Black or minority ethnic background)
• only 16% of the women said that childcare had not affected their seniority or income at work

and so many more depressing statistics

Unfortunately (and unsurprisingly)  the Government said that it didn’t make sense to launch an independent review right now, as it would not be done in time to feed into the current government spending review. 

So we’re just gonna call it a day then. OF COURSE NOT! We’re just getting started. We are writing a letter to the government asking them to commit to commissioning an independent review, and gang, we’re going to need your help – tweet your MP and let them know that we’re not giving up, and that we need childcare change now.

Special thanks to the House of Commons Petitions Committee for calling for an independent review of the early years sector on the 7th of October. Read the full report here.

By Taryn Robinson & Lauren Fabianski